Monday, April 20, 2015

You Know It's Bad When Italy's Finance Minister Is Scoring On You

A surprise to no one outside of the Ivy League geniuses* at the highest levels of our government and their fellow fascist / socialist buddies in Europe, Greece is about to finally go over the fiscal cliff.

For those unfamiliar with the Greek situation: The Greeks spent lots of money on social programs because they were compassionate. Then they regulated the heck out of their economy because if they didn't strangle private enterprise, it might make undue profits. Finally, they handed out lots and lots of government jobs because that's just what a caring, 21st Century society does. Being good, little post-modernists, they didn't worry about actually creating anything or earning their benefits or stuff like that. That's racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and just plain mean.

So the Greeks borrowed and borrowed and borrowed. Every time it looked like they were going to go bankrupt, the Euros found a new way to slip them more money. Lots and lots of meetings were held in which Ivy League types (or Euro equivalents) in expensive suits talked with each other about credit extensions, quantitative easing, debt restructuring and economic reforms. No money was ever actually paid back. More borrowing took place.

Now we're at the point where even the dimmest Peronist fascist is starting to recognize that the Greeks are never going to be able to pay their debts and icky words from the Real World like default, bankruptcy and liquidation are starting to be used about Greece. (Those are words a good post-modernist should never have to hear without a ton of Trigger Warnings.)

To top it all off, the finance minister from Europe's fiscal clown car country, Italy, decided to take to the airwaves to say this.

Italy’s finance minister on Thursday warned that Greece’s worsening cash crisis could push the country into an accidental exit from the eurozone as time runs out for Athens to reach a financing deal.

“Negotiations are difficult, liquidity is getting short, so under pressure it’s more likely that an accident can happen,” the finance minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, said in an interview.

That's game over right there. When the Italians start dunking on you over your debt, you're finished.

* - Said geniuses are too busy right now worrying about grown men having access to the widest possible array of cakes to sweat trivial things like the international banking system blowing up.